[kordless]

Reality is a security overlay, keeping private data about individual entities from being inspected casually and limits the knowledge of all things from occurring in a single locale. This is the speed of causality (light).

The base function of this reality is to read, process, and write data in a highly immutable manner. This is conservation of energy. Collaborators in this reality exchange data in a variety of ways, but visual inputs through the mind's eye seem to be the predominate method for memory recollection. Based on causal interviews with individuals since learning I have Aphantasia, it would appear these "internal" views seem less immutable than "out here". Some can zoom their mind's eye. Some see in black and white. Some see icons.

One hypothesis to explain the "shared" part of the hallucination would be the existence an immutable shared data structure underlying the universe which uses consensus to agree, long term, about what happened "out here" based on various and sundry inputs from an entity's internal view & resulting action(causality). Internal views may be non-immutable (highly mutable) and may be influenced by metaphysical phenomenon. People see things that others don't see. The Romans thought it was the act of Gods to see and hear things others didn't.

We've always assumed our brains are making these images up, but perhaps they aren't and we missed something important along the way.

[MarkPNeyer]

> One hypothesis to explain the "shared" part of the hallucination would be the existence an immutable shared data structure underlying the universe which uses consensus to agree, long term

This is a hypothesis i also stumbled into: reality as a method for coming to consensus on a data structure.

Check out this simple description of a game with similar mechanics:

https://markpneyer.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/the-photoshop-ga...

[jasonkostempski]

That reminded me I had a random thought about how the universe is a sorting algorithm working towards heat death a few months ago. Probably not an original thought but its fun to think about.

[kordless]

Where heat death == infinite light on the metaphysical side.

[Xiol]

Weird. I searched for the definition of Aphantasia and came across this[1] link which describes it in detail. I think I'm the same - I can't visualise things in that way.

[1] - https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...

[napworth]

Wow. Just finished your link. A great read. I don't know which I find more surprising. The fact that Blake (The creator of Firefox) can't picture anything in his mind, or the fact that he thought everyone was the same, and that "picture a beach" was metaphorical.

[Xiol]

I thought everyone was the same, and "picture a beach" was metaphorical.

The fact people can actually do this in their minds has blown my mind - metaphorically. I'm genuinely still reeling from this.

[neom]

Wait what, really? I can literally draw anything you ask me to in my mind, I can see things so vividly I can manipulate them with my mind if I want to. Fascinating that you can't, totally... blows..my...mind. :)

(edit: then as a note, you might find this interesting: https://medium.com/@jedgar/my-broken-mind-24bb98a1e793)

[kordless]

Most of us with Aphantasia can feel three dimensional models, however. My tests show I have a high accuracy of the items I'm feeling, but not necessarily a lot of detail. It could be compared to a 3D model with no texture mapping. I will also note that not everyone's visualization systems are the same, so you may be able to draw anything, but some may not be able to zoom, enhance color, rotate, change perspective, etc. I have one friend that can move icons of things around and draw lines between them, but can't imagine a beach.

[dandelion_lover]

Some more reading about the subject:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

[neom]

Fascinating. For being the same, we really are soooo different, aren't we? :)

[kordless]

Sorry about that. If it helps any, it would appear Aphantasiacs have purpose here. My kids have it. We're immune from commercial and "bad image" influence as well.

[platz]

think of someone you know.. can you not think of what their face looks like?